Content Warning: The section of the guide contains descriptions of domestic violence, alcohol addiction, the sexual abuse of children, death by suicide, and racism that are present in the source text. The novel also includes racial slurs, which the guide quotes and obscures.

The story begins in rural Branchville, South Carolina, in August 1924. A young wife and mother named Gertrude Pardee sits in a swamp, watching a large female alligator on her nest. She holds a shotgun and tells the reader, “It’s easier to kill a man than a gator, but it takes the same kind of wait. You got to watch for the weakness, and take your shot to the back of the head” (11).

Gertrude comes from a family of poor white farmers. They are in dire straits because of the boll weevil blight that has killed their cotton crops year after year and made life increasingly hard. Gertrude’s husband, Alvin, has taken to drinking. He beats her often, and one of her eyes is now swollen shut from his most recent attack. Alvin has isolated her from her own family. He refuses to allow her to attend her father’s funeral, and he burns all the letters that her brother writes before she can read them.